Page "Blitzkrieg" Paragraph 9

During the First World War, on the Western front, the two sides had been locked in a trench war, where kill zones by overlapping fire of machine guns and barbed wire prevented either side from breaking through.

The British introduced the tank as invulnerable to machine gun fire, and able to cross trenches and breach barbed wire, to lead men across the battlefield.

The British had been able to penetrate German lines this way, but not enough tanks were made before the war ended.

The Germans had therefore first-hand experience of the potential of tanks to change the battlefield.

Where the allied armies were slow to deploy and study the tank in the inter-war years, the German army was very eager to study and master this new technology.